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Month: November 2013

While the harvest is complete, projects are still ongoing. Here is what we have been up to.

Popcorn Update

Well, we shelled some of the strawberry, blue and white popcorn. Every variety needed to dry some more especially the blue and the white. There was simply too much moisture in the kernels. They wouldn’t even pop. You could tell they were planted later than the strawberry variety. So we have a fan blowing on the ears trying to dry down the kernels.

Garden Science

Look at what happened to the tomatoes that Sam and I put in the garden. We had a lot of luck with them this year. 3/4 of them ripened. And we were able to use many of them to make tomato sauce.

Recipe of the Week

We took some of the green tomatoes that we ripened in the basement along with some we had frozen, and we put them through our juicer to make tomato juice. The best part of the day was listening to the boys ask their dad about where the canning supplies came from, and Steve telling them all about his memories gardening and canning with his Grandpa and Grandma Gifford.

The boys were so proud that they could operate the juicer all by themselves. They even commented on what great teamwork they were doing. So fun to see how proud they were of what they were accomplishing.

After juicing the tomatoes, they are put on the stove and brought to a simmer. Next we added a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of lemon juice to each jar that had been sanitized.

Next Keith helped to fill the jars leaving about an inch of head space between the juice and the lid.

We wipe the top of the juice filled jars with a clean cloth. Then after boiling the lids for about 3 minutes, we use a magnet to place them on the jars. Next we screw on the jar rings and place in a pressure canner. We were fortunate to have all of the jars seal so that we have them to make pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce and simply tomato sauce for the upcoming year.

Family Project

Now that Halloween is over don’t through your gourds out. I love Thanksgiving and the option to keep the garden items around for another few weeks. We painted the gourds with chalk paint. this would be a cute idea to paint them with chalk paint and use as name cards for your Thanksgiving table. Place chalk by each place setting, it may provide for some interesting entertainment during the holiday meal.

The boys and I decided to paint a few of the larger gourds with chalkboard paint. Keith helped open the can and mix it.

Keith and I painted on one layer of paint and let it dry.

Sam and I painted on a second layer. Sam also had the idea that we should paint a green tomato with chalkboard paint…so we did.

The boys had fun coloring the gourds and the tomatoes painted with chalk paint.